


Friday

by boxoftheskyking



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, Gansey's Death, Multi, Suicide, Time Loop, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 11:09:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6655561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From this great prompt from ninnieamee: "Gansey dies. Cue Groundhog Day/Peggy Sue shenanigans for the character of your choice as they try to figure out the one course of events that prevents the death."</p><p>Adam tries to save Gansey twenty-one times</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 2

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really not interested in speculating about canon, so I hope it's okay that some of this is unresolved. I haven't read any of TRK yet, even the preview chapters, so sorry if this is already untrue.
> 
> Huge thanks to ninnieamee for the great prompt and rosewindow for feedback and support.

Adam wakes up on Saturday morning in his own bed, which is the first disturbing thing.

He definitely fell asleep in Blue’s bed at 300 Fox Way. “Fell asleep” is wrong. Passed out. Collapsed. Held his breath and tried to expire.

Remembering that reminds him of the rest of it, and he has to stumble to the bathroom to vomit. He makes himself focus on the burn of the bile in the back of his throat, the heat when it passes his lips, the sour taste of it, the horrible contraction of his stomach. He revels in it, every sensation that isn’t the overwhelming throbbing of  _ Gansey, Gansey, GanseyGanseyGanseyGansey _

A knock at the door. Adam stays clutching the toilet. Someone must have brought him here, brought him home. He has a sudden, searing image of Ronan and Blue wrapped around each other in Blue’s bed, Adam sent away, sent home. It’s the least he deserves.

He throws up again.

“Yeah, I’m just going to— Jesus, Adam!” 

Ronan drops his phone and rushes over to Adam’s side. He hasn’t changed clothes since yesterday. He puts a hand to the back of Adam’s neck, softly, and the only part of Adam that isn’t puking or throbbing sings at the knowledge that Ronan is still willing to touch him.

“Hey, are you sick? What’s wrong?”

Adam wipes his mouth with some wadded up paper towel and rises to brush his teeth. He can’t meet Ronan’s eye, unable to face the disgust that must be in there somewhere.

“Adam. Hey, talk to me.” Ronan’s talking like he would have yesterday, soft in the way that he only gets when no one else is around. Out of habit, he rests one hand on Adam’s back and Adam hates how much he loves it.

“I’m fine,” he says after he spits. Ronan’s keeping it together far better than Adam ever expected. Of course, it’s hard to tell sometimes, with Ronan. All it takes is a stray spark and he’ll self-immolate. But if Ronan’s playing the everything’s-fine card, Adam won’t be outdone.

“Still up for it today?”

“For what?”

“Gansey. You know.”

Adam winces at the name. “Jesus, already?” He hadn’t expected it to be so soon, but he supposes there’s cops to talk to, maybe some Aglionby administration. Jesus, Gansey’s parents. Helen. He takes a deep breath. “All right. Let’s go.”

“Gonna go in your pajamas, or …”

Adam pulls away from him to change. Without looking at him, Ronan’s contemptuous voice almost sounds amused. Fond. Adam hates himself for thinking it.

And then they get down to the parking lot. And there’s the Pig. And there’s Noah, sitting on the hood, and Blue standing in front of him trying to get a piece of his hair to stay flat against his head. And there’s Gansey, leaning against the driver’s side door, exactly as he was yesterday. Adam’s heart stops, and then he stops, and then Ronan runs into him from behind.

“Took you long enough!” The ghost of Gansey laughs.

“Yeah, well, Parrish has a delicate constitution this morning,” Ronan calls back, tucking an arm around Adam and pulling him along. “You’re fucking weird today, man. This better not be an omen.”

Gansey grins up at him as they approach from his artfully slouched arrangement against the car. “I’ve got a good feeling, gentlemen,” he announces. “And Jane. Yes. Something momentous happens today.”

With a little “oh” sound, Noah vanishes. Blue sighs and takes his place on the hood. 

Adam unfreezes and crosses the distance between them in a flash. He reaches for Gansey’s shoulders first, finds them broad and solid as always. He grabs his wrists next, sliding his fingers around to find the pulse. When he finds it, he reaches up for Gansey’s face and feels warmth in his cheeks, sweat on his brow, mint on his breath. 

“ _ Gansey,” _ he breathes. “Oh my God.”

Gansey’s eyes are wide and he’s very, very still. “Adam,” he says slowly. “Are you feeling alright?”

From the corner of his eye, Adam sees movement. Noah, reflected in the window of the Pig. Adam looks over his shoulder but sees only a confused Ronan. Reflection-Noah waves to him and then points to his wrist.

“Gansey,” Adam says. “What day is it?”

“Friday,” Gansey says carefully. “The eighteenth.” He reaches up to feel Adam’s forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

They must make and odd picture, Adam thinks suddenly, two boys—one pristine and regal, one unkempt and smelling like sleep and bile—holding on to each other’s faces in a church parking lot at nine in the morning.

A whisper in his deaf ear. He closes his eyes and cocks his head to the side.

_ You asked for a different ending _ , the whisper comes in Latin.  _ You begged and you pleaded and you suffered. _

_ Yes, _ he thinks back, wildly hopeful.  _ Please, please, I’ll do anything. _

_ You asked for a different ending _ , Cabeswater whispers again.  _ So make one. _

“I’m feeling sick,” Adam says suddenly, pulling away from Gansey. Gansey’s brow furrows and he reaches for him again.

_ I’m taking this chance _ , Adam thinks fervently.  _ I’m not going to let it happen. Not this time. _

“I did ask if you were okay.” Ronan sounds put out, like he’d wasted his daily ounce of compassion on someone who didn’t appreciate it properly.

“What’s the matter?” Gansey asks, and Adam dodges his hands.

“I’ll be fine, I’m just sick. Nauseous.”

“He was puking when I went up to get him. Morning sickness.”

“Shut up, Lynch,” Blue kicks out at him from the hood of the car. “If you’re sick, Adam, you need to rest. You have the day off anyway. We can do this another time.”

Gansey looks pained. “You should rest, absolutely. I’m not so sure that we actually  _ can _ do this another time, though. Given what Artemus said about—”

“It’s fine,” Adam jumps in, too quickly. “Go without me. I’ll be fine.”

Blue hops off the car. “No way. We do this together or not at all. Artemus is full of—”

“Seriously,” Adam says, begging her with his eyes. “You guys should go. You shouldn’t miss your shot. Our shot.”  _ Please, please, please, Blue. Figure it out. It’s my fault that it happens; if I’m not there then it won’t happen. _

“What about the favor?” Gansey asks. It breaks Adam’s heart to see him so serious, to know once and for all that Gansey’s always been saving the favor for him. Everything about Gansey is breaking his heart this morning.

“Blue can—Blue knows what to say.” He looks at her meaningfully, and she nods at him, still looking reluctant.  _ Save him, save him, save him. _

Gansey rubs his bottom lip. “I don’t like it. This doesn’t feel right.”

Adam’s mind races. “I suppose I can—” he flinches, trying to make it look unconscious, gags a little.

“No. No, no, sorry. No, go lay down. Here let me—” Gansey actually makes to usher him back inside, arm around his back. It’s like Adam greeting him with an overabundance of touch has erased all of Gansey’s carefully kept distance, like he’s making up for every time he held himself back. He leans in, closer than ever, to press the back of his fingers to Adam’s cheek.  _ That isn’t how you check someone’s temperature _ , Adam thinks, fondly exasperated, but he’d never complain. Gansey’s living fingers, Gansey’s shoulder brushing his. Gansey’s arm.

“I’ve got it, Gansey. Here, Ronan.” He holds out a hand. “Give me your phone. Let me know if you need me. I’ll see what I can get out of Cabeswater from bed.”

Ronan’s all too eager to give up his cell phone, and Adam slips it into his pocket carefully, like a ritual. Everything feels like a ritual.  _ The next time I touch this phone, _ he thinks—prays, almost _ , I’ll hear Gansey, triumphant. The next time I see Gansey, he’ll be alive and he’ll be glowing and he’ll be standing at Glendower’s right hand. _

Blue surprises him by squeezing him tightly in a quick hug. 

“Feel better soon,” she whispers. She looks up at him with her serious, dark eyes, and Adam knows she’s the only one who understands the stakes. Thunder rumbles, a few miles off yet, and Adam tries not to see it as an omen. “Victory pizza at Nino’s later. On the house.”

“Donny’s going to let you do that?” He grins down at her.

“If I can successfully find and wake a dead Welsh king, I can get my dumbass manager to comp a couple of pizzas.”

He pats her hair like Noah does and lets her go. He hopes that Noah finds them in Cabeswater and keeps an eye on them all.

“Good luck,” he calls to them all as he heads back to the doorway of St. Agnes. “Excelsior.”

“Excelsior!” they call back to him, Blue and Ronan giggling, but Gansey looking deadly serious. He raises a hand in that oddly classic way he has—it’s not a wave and not quite a salute. Solemn recognition, one man to another. Adam’s heart breaks and breaks.

And then they’re gone.

Adam sits on his floor and flips tarot cards in his hands. He’s got long fingers, strong hands, and for a moment he wonders if he should learn to shuffle and deal them hand to hand, the way Blue does. He remembers how impressed he was, back at the first reading. How other-wordly she had seemed, his future fluttering back and forth between his fingers.

_ Cabeswater _ , he whispers in his mind.  _ Please take care of him. Take care of them. _

Cabeswater is silent. He refuses to let it bother him. He’s done what he needed to. Without Adam there to distract, to make the wrong move, to push when he should have retreated, Gansey will live.

He dozes, fitfully, woken up by flashes of the day before. The day that wasn’t. Gansey, bloody and broken. Gansey’s empty eyes. Gansey’s blood on the ground.

When Ronan’s phone finally rings, he’s bleary and hazy and too out of it to be concerned by hearing Ronan’s voice over the line.

“Adam,” is all he says.

“What? Ronan?”

“Adam,” he says again, and it’s almost a whisper. “Adam. Adam.”

“Ronan, what’s going on?”

“Adam. I—”

“What happened?”

“Come here. Come to Cabeswater. You have to— You have to talk to Cabeswater. You have to get him back.”

Adam’s heart starts on fire and freezes, simultaneously.  _ No _ , he thinks.  _ I did what you said, I did what you promised. No. _

“I’m coming,” he says shortly, then shoves his feet into his shoes and sprints for his car.  _ No, no, you can’t do this. You can’t do this again. _

Time stops while he drives and restarts as he stumbles into a clearing in Cabeswater. He’s never been there before, not in reality, but memory from the other version of today guides his feet. 

Blue catches his eye first. She’s on her knees, and her whole front is spattered with blood. She has her hands held out in front of her, hovering in the air, fingers pointing up, blood dripping into the dirt. There’s a bloody smear on the ground in front of her ( _ Gansey’s blood, Gansey’s blood _ ), but no body. Ronan is standing a few feet away, curled in on himself and stock still, phone still in his hand.

“What happened? What happened?” Adam demands, running over to him. Ronan’s mouth opens and shuts uselessly, silent.

“His body’s gone,” Blue says flatly. “It took his body. We don’t even—They won’t even let us—”

She shakes and shuts her eyes.

“You have to get him back,” Ronan says suddenly, harshly, grabbing Adam’s wrist. “Tell Cabeswater to bring him back. Goddamn it, you’re the Magician. Bring him  _ back _ .”

Adam closes his eyes and reaches out with his mind.

_ I don’t understand, _ he says to the trees _ , I don’t understand what you want. What do you want from me? _

The trees say nothing.

“What do you want from me?” he shouts in Latin. “What do you need me to do?”

_ Change _ , the trees whisper back to him.

“I did! I did it, just as you said. I changed the day, I changed everything.”

_ Change the choice _ .

“Goddamn it, I did as you asked. Bring him back.  _ Bring him back _ .”

“ _ Too late _ ,” the leaves rustle, and this time it’s loud enough for everyone to hear.

“What did it say?” Blue asks. “Adam, what did it say?”

“Too late,” Ronan whispers. He crumples to his knees and presses his head down, almost to the dirt, gasping. “Oh God, oh God.”

Adam gapes at the sky. “What do you mean, ‘too late’? What do you  _ want _ from me?”

The trees are silent. Adam covers his face and curses every inch of himself, every fiber, every cell, every synapse responsible for every decision that’s brought him to this point. There’s no molecule of himself that’s uncorrupted, unpoisoned, unspoiled. He is, as a body, a study in failure.

Suddenly, and without warning, Blue launches herself at him, barreling into his chest. He barely catches her and stays upright.

“How  _ dare _ you,” she screams at him, bloody fingers twisted in his shirt. “How dare you leave us alone. How dare you leave him alone.”

She’s slamming her fists into his chest, his stomach, anything she can reach, but her head is down and her eyes are closed and it’s easy to minimize the damage.

“Blue, Blue, Blue,” he murmurs. “I’m so sorry.” 

It’s hard to conceptualize death without a body. Gansey’s death without Gansey’s body. It’s not that he’s lacking evidence. One look at Blue or Ronan is plenty of evidence that the death is reral. But he’s too swamped with memory—not old enough for memory, surely. Knowledge, then. Physical knowledge. Gansey’s fingers on his face.  _ Gansey’s hands. Gansey’s shoulders. _ Gansey’s arm across his back.  _ Gansey’s arm. _

And there they there. There come the tears.

“How dare you,” Blue’s sobbing too, now, still striking him but her blows are weaker. “You left him to die alone. He asked for you, Adam, he asked for you but you  _ weren’t there _ .”

Adam whimpers, and pulls her tighter to him and tries to bury himself in her neck. Ronan’s come up behind her and is holding her arms, stopping her from hitting him anymore, but he wants her to keep going. He wants her to punish him properly.

_ And now I wake up _ , he thinks.  _ Now. Now. Now. I wake up and it’s this morning. Please, please, please. Now I wake up. _

But he doesn’t.

He holds onto Blue as he dials 300 Fox Way. As Calla bundles them all into her Ford and tosses Adam’s keys to Orla to bring his car back. No one touches the Pig.

When Maura takes Blue upstairs with gentle hands to wash the blood off of her, Adam fills his empty arms with anything he can find. Ronan, a pillow from the sofa, his own knees. One of Blue’s tiny cousins comes wandering in and clambers up onto his lap. Adam says nothing, just holds onto her as tightly as he dares and lets her play with his hair, hardly in his body at all. He should go to Ronan. He should find him and hold him and kiss his forehead and promise him that things will be all right. He should learn what happened, exactly; he should know where it went wrong. But he doesn’t. He sits on the edge of the sofa and allows himself to turn to stone.

At midnight, he falls asleep hard and fast, like stepping into traffic.

And then he opens his eyes and he’s back in his room. Friday. He rolls onto his stomach, hides his face in the pillow, and sobs.


	2. Day 3

It’s early - the others won’t come for him for at least an hour - so Adam takes a long shower. It’s not very hot and the water pressure is terrible, but he scrubs every inch of himself until he’s ruddy and sore. 

_ Friday, it’s still Friday. We can change it. _

He’s waiting in the parking lot for Gansey to pull up. Instead of climbing in, he goes over to the driver’s side window.

“You ready?”

Adam’s been preparing what to say next for the last hour.

“We can’t go today.”

“What?”

“Cabeswater. We can’t do it today.”

“We  _ have _ to do it today. That’s what Artemus said. Even Calla agrees.”

Adam shakes his head. “I’ve been hearing from Cabeswater. It’s not safe.”

“Of course it’s not  _ safe _ ,” Ronan sneers from the passenger seat. “We’re digging up people that aren’t meant to be dug up.”

“No. Specifically for us. Specifically today. We can’t go in there.”

Gansey turns off the engine. “Adam, if you’re feeling unsure—”

“I’m not unsure about anything. I’m one hundred percent sure. I’ve done three different tarot spreads - every one Persephone taught me. And single card readings. I’ve been scrying since six this morning. We cannot go today.”

Thunder rumbles ominously overhead. Adam hopes it gives his story a ring of truth.

“Adam, it was always going to be dangerous.” It’s Blue this time, leaning between the seats. She’s looking at him like she means to say something else. “That’s inevitable. But we know what we’re doing.”

“Not. Today. Look.” He sees Gansey’s brow furrow and his mind races through his talking points, every argument he went through in the shower. “I don’t care if you’re angry with me. Be angry, that’s fine. But don’t go to Cabeswater today.”

“Why? I don’t understand—”

“Bad things will happen, Gansey.” He didn’t want to do this, but he knows a ringer when he’s got one, and he silently apologizes to his friend before saying, “To Blue. Something really bad will happen to Blue.”

“ _ What?”  _ Blue says from the backseat. She’s staring at him like she’s trying to puzzle him out.  _ Don’t try _ , Adam thinks at her, wishing for the first time that she was psychic and could here him. _ Trust me, trust me, I know what I’m doing. _

Gansey goes pale. “Blue? What bad things? Adam?”

Adam thinks for a moment. It has to be believable - he can’t think of anything that sounds scary and unpreventable enough, so he just looks down and murmurs. “We lose her, Gansey. That’s what happens if we go today. The Page of Cups turning up with Death, with Swords every time. Scrying, I saw Maura, and it—”

He breaks off and prays that he isn’t overplaying it. Blue is gaping at him from the back seat, and both Gansey and Ronan are looking disturbed.

“So Maggot stays home.”

“Like hell I will!”

“We need her,” Adam says. “We need her to amplify. It can’t be today.”

“Did Artemus—” Gansey looks conflicted. Leave the girl he loves behind on the most important day of his life, or cancel the most important day of his life to save the girl he loves.

“We got along just fine before Artemus came along. We don’t need him.” 

“Amen,” Blue says. Ronan laughs at her. 

Gansey bites his lips. His hand goes to the stick, back to the wheel, up to his hair, and back to the stick. His brow furrows, and then he nods, once. Decided. He blows out a breath, long and loud, like a horse that’s been ridden too hard.

“Well,” he says. 

Adam straightens up.

Ronan gets out of the car. “Well I’m  _ awake _ now. What are we doing?”

Gansey looks around at them, lost.

“Brunch?” Noah says, appearing suddenly in Ronan’s vacant seat. Gansey jumps.

“Jesus!”

“Just Noah.”

“It’s too early for brunch,” Blue says.

“Breakfast, then,” Noah says happily.

Ronan makes a face at him. “You don’t even  _ eat.” _

Adam feels a sudden, soaring joy. He’d been expecting to fight, to break the already damaged bonds between himself and the others in order to save Gansey, but it hadn’t been necessary. They trust him. Gansey trusts him. Gansey is looking cautiously up at him, waiting for him to say he won’t come, that he’s going to pick up a shift, but Adam grins down at him and says, “We’ll catch you up. Where do you want to go?”

Gansey looks over at Noah. “Best breakfast in Henrietta?”

Noah grins. “I know just the spot.”

After the Pig pulls out, destination shared between Gansey and Adam, Ronan wraps a hand around Adam’s hip. Adam doesn’t normally let him get away with this much in public, but there’s no one around and he’s lighter than air. He lets Ronan tug him towards the Hondayota and press him against the driver’s side, hidden slightly from the rest of the parking lot.

Ronan’s grinning. “We’re not going to  _ brunch,  _ are we?” he murmurs against the side of Adam’s neck. Adam grabs at his shirt but doesn’t actually pull him away. “We’ve got a whole day off.”

“Look at you, making the most out of disappointment.” The last word comes out breathier than Adam would like, but to be fair Ronan’s working very hard to make it that way.

“You know me,” Ronan traces the sides of his grin under Adam’s ear. “Feed me a lemon and I’ll piss lemonade.”

Adam allows him a five-second kiss, then ten, then twenty, before he pulls him back by the scruff of the neck. 

“You’re not disappointed?” He’s only panting a little.

“About what?”

“Not going today. Today was going to be it, the day we find him.”

“Who, Glendower?” Ronan laughs. “I don’t give two shits about Glendower. I only ever wanted him because I want you. You and Gansey. I want it for you, nothing more.”

Adam is warmed, suddenly, overwhelmed by a huge and almost painful affection. He kisses Ronan again before pulling back.

“Any other day, I’d be happy to ditch. Any other day, I’d like nothing better than to spend ten hours in bed with nowhere to be.”

Ronan goes pink. Adam laughs, throaty and huge and completely out of character.

“But today,” he declares in a voice to big for himself. “I want breakfast.  _ Brunch _ . Goddamnit, I want brunch!”

Ronan looks at him a bit wide-eyed, like he doesn’t know what to do with this wild, laughing Adam, this Adam who kisses him in parking lots and talks about beds.

“ _ You _ actually want to go out? And spend real money on food.”

“Well,” Adam smirks at him. “You’re buying, right?”

Ronan gapes. “ _ Yes, _ ” he says fervently. “Fuck, yes. Get in the car. Drive, now.”

Adam laughs again, and doesn’t stop until they pull up to the restaurant.

In a quiet moment later that day, he tries to remember how that felt. Light and bubbly like pink champagne, like soda water, like snowmelt and victory. How sure he felt, then. How truly confident he was that he’d solved it.

But they pull up to the restaurant and there’s an ambulance outside and paramedics swarmed around a body on the ground and Blue, sitting on her backside on the asphalt of the parking lot where the EMTs had pushed her, skirt riding up on her thighs so the rough ground scrapes at her skin. And Gansey isn’t breathing. And there’s a wasp’s nest broken open on the ground beside them. 

Adam says nothing for the rest of the day. He plugs his good ear and mutters to Cabeswater, rocking and rocking on the curb outside the hospital. He covers his head with his arms and curses Cabeswater, curses fate, curses himself, because how can it still hurt when it’s happened already? How can it still hurt?

He stays there, silent and small, until Blue yanks him to his feet in tear-streaked fury.

“You’ve been out here three hours!” she shouts at him. “You have to deal with him now! Okay? I can’t— I can’t give him— I can’t do it anymore. He’s your responsibility. He’s your heart to fucking— protect. Mend. Whatever it is you do when you love someone. I can’t fucking do it anymore!”

He puts out his arms to her and she collapses into him, sobbing. “I can’t feel it for myself when he’s around,” she forces out. “It’s so loud. It’s like Calla said. It’s so, so loud.”

And Adam knows that when he finds Ronan, he will be silent. But he will understand what Blue means. The Lynches feel on a different plane than the rest of the world. Ronan’s grief is like getting close to the ocean - before you smell it, before you hear it, when you can just begin to feel it on the air, on your skin. Salt. 

Everything, turned to salt.

Adam keeps his head down and holds her. Goes inside and holds Ronan, holds and refuses to let go until Ronan spasms in his arms, grief leaving the layer of dreams and bursting out into reality. He stays silent and watches the clock in the waiting room tick, tick, tick over towards evening. He brings Ronan and Blue back to Monmouth and holds them and watches the old antique alarm clock on Gansey’s bookshelf as it ticks, ticks, ticks over until eleven. Eleven fifteen. Eleven forty-five. Eleven fifty-nine. Midnight.

Darkness.

Adam wakes up. St. Agnes. Friday. He stares at the cracks in his slanted ceiling and screams.


	3. Days 4-20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Suicide

When Adam was eight years old, Darren Paulson from the trailer three down from the Parrishes jumped out at him after school, wearing a big rubber devil mask. “It’s Halloween!” he shouted as Adam tripped and fell, hands coming up to protect his face. Darren laughed, raucously, and yanked Adam to his feet, shoving the mask over his face. “Come on, boy, we’ll scare your old man.” He had held Adam tightly by the arms in the shadow of his trailer, waiting for Robert Parrish to come around the corner.

Since then, the odd feeling of panic and impending doom has always been accompanied by a ghostly smell of cheap rubber.

He smells it every day, as he wakes, as he falls asleep. Time doesn’t pass, time repeats and reuses, but Adam remembers every day.

It’s not fair that he has to remember if he doesn’t get to move on.

He remembers:

Driving Gansey out of town in the Hondoyota, driving as far as he can get in twelve hours, and the brakes fail and he spends the last three hours of consciousness bleeding out and watching Gansey’s blank eyes as the flies start to gather.

Driving Gansey in Ronan’s BMW - a good, solid, reliable car - and walking into the middle of a gas station robbery to see Gansey catch a bullet to the side of the head.

Keeping all of them at Fox Way, only to watch Gansey vanish into a scrying bowl.

Gansey, tied to a chair in Monmouth as Adam stares at him for the whole day, feeding him by hand, rubbing his fingers so they don’t go numb. Gansey, complaining of a headache. Gansey, dead, with blood in his ears.

Each day Adam wakes up with a pit of dread in his stomach. It never gets easier. He thinks it should; eventually it would be funny, right? Eventually the repetition of it would give it levity, would give him the chance to look out at the camera. “What, again?” And in some moments, when he’s alone, he feels like laughing. Hysterically, desperately, but still laughing.

And then he sees Gansey’s face. And then he tells Gansey, “No. No Cabeswater today. No Glendower.” And Gansey furrows his beautiful brow and rubs at this beautiful lips with a slender, perfectly animated finger, and he nods and he says, “If you think it’s best.” 

Adam has seen churchgoers day in and day out, just looking out his little grimy window. He has seen the Lynches leave St. Agnes, shoulders bowed. He has heard Gansey speak of Glendower more times than he can count. But he isn’t sure he’s ever seen faith quite like this,  like what Gansey has when it comes to him. To Adam. It eviscerates him. The trust of it. The faith, the purity of it. It tears him to pieces because it never leaves his eyes, not until they turn blank and glassy and dead.

This morning, he wakes and stares at the ceiling for a long time. It’s still dark, dawn just starting to consider breaking. Adam plugs his good ear with one finger and calls to Cabeswater.

_ Why? _ he asks.  _ Why are you doing this to me? _

_ You must learn _ , it whispers to him.  His breath catches at the response - it’s more than he’d hoped for.

_ Learn what? How to get over him? How can I if you keep throwing him back in my face? How can I forget him? _

Cabeswater says nothing. Adam curses. He notices, absently, that there a tears rolling down the sides of his face and into his ears. It’s an odd feeling, and he almost giggles. He doesn’t particularly want to cry, but it’s happening now and he doesn’t have the energy to stop it. It’s been so long since he’s felt safe.

He knows what he has to do.

He rises and pulls up the hem of his T-shirt to wipe his face. It’s still happening, the crying, in that odd, numb way, but he doesn’t mind too much.

“I can’t do it again today,” he says to the room. Technically to Cabeswater, but he knows Cabeswater isn’t listening. He goes to the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror. Streaky-faced, red-eyed, hair every which way. He catches a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye, waving at him from the mirror.

“Noah?”

He turns, but there’s no one there. He looks back at the mirror, but it’s only himself he sees there. 

“Sorry, Noah.”

He takes a breath and looks around the apartment. It doesn’t matter, really, where he is. If this day is simply going to repeat and repeat and repeat, nothing really matters. Except, maybe, what he’s about to do. Maybe this is what it takes. 

He reaches under his bed, fumbling at the bottom of the mattress. There’s a small package duct taped to it, a ziploc bag full of emergency cash and his father’s gun, wrapped in a plastic grocery sack. He leaves the cash.

His breath is coming more quickly now, nervous like he’s about to speak in public.  _ It’ll be fine,  _ he tells himself.  _ It’s worth a shot. For Gansey, for Gansey _ .

That’s what he’s thinking, when he pulls the trigger.  _ Fine, fine, fine. Gansey, Gansey, Gansey. _

Black.

Hissing.

The smell of rubber and smoke.

He does not wake up.

His eyes open and he is standing and he is not in his bed and it is not Friday morning. Or, it is, but the sun is creeping higher in the sky and he is standing in the bathroom doorway and there is a foot stretched out on the floor in front of him. It’s bare, it’s long, and it has a crooked toe where he kicked out at a cinderblock a few years ago and broke it.

“Oh,” he says flatly. He looks at his hands. They look like normal hands. He doesn’t want to look at the body on the floor, but he takes a step into the room anyway.

Then, from a few blocks away, the grumbling whine of the Pig approaching.

“ _ Oh _ ,” he says again. “Oh  _ shit.” _

_ “ _ Wrong move.” Noah’s voice comes from behind him and he startles, badly.

“Jesus, Noah.”

“This is the wrong move, Adam.”

Adam ignores him. He goes to grab a chair to prop under the door handle. Buy some time. The Pig is getting closer.

“Shit, shit, shitshitshit—”

He can’t grab the chair. He can’t touch anything. His hand doesn’t pass through it, but it’s like he gets misdirected halfway to contact.

“Noah!” he shouts, but he doesn’t know what he wants.

“I can’t touch it either, not like this. Listen, Adam. I know you want out, but you made the—”

“Wrong move. Yeah. How do you know? Are you in here with me? Are you stuck in here with me?”

“Um.” Noah scratches at this cheek. “Not really. But I do keep — I mean, time is a circle. Or time is a … a thing.” He waves his finger around in a complicated figure eight. “And I keep getting caught on the, the this. It’s like a nail sticking up out of a floorboard. My socks get caught. You know.”

Adam doesn’t know. 

“Can you stay with me?”

“Maybe. If it was Blue, then—”

There are footsteps on the stairs. Adam chokes on the smell of rubber.

“Oh God,” Adam mutters. “Oh God, oh God, oh God, I’ve got to get out of here. Noah, Noah please.”

Noah holds his hands up and starts to fade. 

“NOAH,” Adam screams at him, desperate. The door opens behind him, and Ronan is on the phone.

“Yeah, I’m just going to—” Ronan stops talking. Adam is still staring into the bathroom where Noah disappeared, and he won’t turn around, he won’t. 

Ronan makes a noise. It’s a hum, almost, just a long  _ nnnnnn _ like he can’t get his mouth open.  Adam wishes, wishes, wishes to be anywhere but here. Ronan’s phone hits the ground and Adam can hear Gansey’s voice, tinny on the other end of the line, asking what’s wrong. 

When Adam Parrish was ten, he used to imagine being dead. Not in a general sense; it was a very specific fantasy. He is dead, he’s been killed by a car or a wasting disease, or—on the bad, bad days—killed by his father. And he is a ghost or an angel, hovering around outside the little concrete church building as his parents weep over his still little body.  He can see in, through the roof. His father blubbers and wails at the lectern, crying out about how good he was, what a good boy, what a hard-working boy. How proud he was. How sad he is. His mother kisses his cold face and whispers  _ I’m so sorry _ into his waxy skin. But it was nothing, a bedtime story. A fairy tale.

It wasn’t like this. 

Adam turns slowly, like he can’t help himself, and sees Ronan bent over the body. He’s still saying that “ _ nnnnnn— n— n—”  _  and his hands aren’t quite touching it. Adam can’t see his face, and he hopes it stays that way.

“Adam?” Ronan chokes out. 

“No,” Adam says suddenly, striding to the door. He can’t open it, though, can’t touch anything. “Oh, Jesus, no.”

“You know what he’s thinking, don’t you?”

“Help me, Noah,” Adam whispers into the door. “Just  _ help me.” _

“You know what he’s thinking.” Adam turns and finds Noah looking back at Ronan. There’s something inhuman in Noah’s eyes, curious. Like watching something howling through glass.

“Adam!” Ronan shouts and it makes Adam turn away again. 

“He’s thinking  _ Not again.” _

“What the  _ fuck _ are you doing here, Noah? Help me! Help me stop it; make it stop.”

Footsteps on the stairs. Adam holds out his arms like he can block the door, but there’s Gansey barreling right into him. He doesn’t go through him, but Adam’s pushed back like there’s a wave around him, like he doesn’t weigh anything at all. He can’t look away from Gansey’s face when he sees. 

“I—” Gansey says, and his eyes go blank. For a moment it’s like the aneurysm all over again, but he blinks and his hand twitches and he lurches forward towards Ronan. Ronan turns to him with an open mouth and wild eyes, hands closed on the body’s shoulders.

“I can’t,” Ronan says, like it’s a complete sentence. “I don’t.”

“Gansey, what’s going on?” Blue calls from the stairwell, and Gansey holds out a hand like he can keep her out through force of will.

“Don’t, Blue, don’t.” He grabs Ronan’s phone and shoves it into Ronan’s hand. “Call 911. Do it.”

“Adam—”

“Do it, Ronan. Now.”

Adam goes into the bathroom and kneels, tucking his head between his knees. Someone screams, he thinks it’s Blue. A moment passes and there’s another scream, and there’s a thud, and there’s a lot of shouting, and someone is sick into his trash can. He looks around for Noah, but Noah’s not in the bathroom. He ventures out to find Noah staring at the others intently, at the tableau of horror that is Blue’s bloody hands, vomit at the corner of Ronan’s mouth, Gansey’s forehead pressed against the body’s. He wishes he could feel it, but he can’t.

“Make it stop,” he whispers to Noah.

“I told you it was a bad idea.”

“You didn’t. Not beforehand. Make it stop.”

“I  _ can’t _ .”

“Then what good are you?” He screams this at Noah, wheeling around and shoving him backwards. He’s destroyed the rest of his friends already, might as well make an even set.

“Oh God,” Blue says in a small voice, staring at the body’s hand, loose around the gun. “He, he— He di— He, he did—”

“Shut up!” Ronan shouts at her. 

Sirens approaching. 

“I thought it would be over,” Adam says to Noah. Noah shakes his head. 

“This isn’t how you fix it.”

“Adam, Adam, please,” Gansey’s whispering it into the body’s cheek and Adam can hear it in his deaf ear. “Adam I’m so, I— Please don’t. Please.”

Footsteps on the stairs. Three people in uniform rush in, pulling Gansey away. Gansey stumbles back into the desk, runs into it, hard. Ronan is in the corner, curled up with his eyes closed, tight, hands clenched into fists against his temples. Blue is staring blankly at the body’s hand, just that, breathing raggedly through her mouth.

Noah is gone.

“Please!” Adam screams at him, at Cabeswater. “End it! End it! I don’t care what you have to do. I don’t care what I’ve done or what I deserve. You want me in hell, that’s fine. But not this one! You hear me? I demand a new hell! Do you hear me?”

Black.

Hissing.

The smell of rubber and smoke.

His eyes open and he is in the passenger seat of the Pig. He can feel the seat under his legs, which should be a good sign. Gansey is staring blankly at the steering wheel, and there is blood on his hands. It’s raining.

“Gansey,” Adam says, but Gansey doesn’t hear him. He tries to put a hand on Gansey’s arm, but, like before, he can’t make contact. He speaks anyway. “Where’s Ronan? Is he okay? Is Blue looking after him?”

Gansey rubs at his eyes. He looks so tired. He’s smearing partly-dried blood over his face, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Adam’s fingers itch to wipe it away.

“Is Blue okay?”

Gansey puts the key in the ignition, and Adam looks out the windshield. They’re near Cabeswater, just outside. Adam isn’t sure how they got here.

“Did they just let you take the car and go?”

Gansey takes a shuddery breath.

“You know it’ll be fine,” Adam says. “If it’s another of the same days, I’ll wake up in a few hours. Like eight hours. If it’s not, then I solved the problem. And you’ll be okay; you’ll all be okay.”

“God damn it, Adam Parrish,” Gansey whispers, and Adam starts.

“Can you—?”

“God damn it.” Gansey covers his face again and his shoulders curl and his forehead touches the steering wheel and his whole body convulses. And he cries.

“Oh. No. No, no, no,” Adam tries the door handle, but he can’t make contact. He shuts his eyes. His ten-year-old self had no idea, no idea at all.

Gansey punches the dashboard, suddenly, viciously. It’s a Ronan move, and in this cloudy light, the hollows of his eyes cast into shadow, his thin fingers red and grasping, he looks so much like a Lynch brother. Adam has never really noticed before how similar they’ve all become. Gansey sits up, bleary-eyed and wild, and starts the car. It protests mightily as he throws it into drive, but it doesn’t fail. It wouldn’t dare.

“Gansey,” Adam says, trying uselessly to grab his arm. “What are you doing?”

What he’s doing is speeding to the heart of Cabeswater, crushing young trees and spraying mud behind him. The sun is blinding, more aggressive than idyllic on a day like today. He stops in the heart of it, near the dreaming tree. He gets out of the car.

“Cabeswater!” he bellows. “You know why I’m here.”

The trees rustle, offended.

“I don’t know what I am to you, and I don’t care. You’ve lost your magician and you want him back. You want your balance back. I’m giving you Glendower. I’m giving you the Raven King.”

The leaves laugh at him, disdainful.

“And I’m giving you me. I don’t know what I am, what I have in me, but whatever it is, it’s yours. I give you my quest and my hope and every ounce of purpose I’ve ever felt. I give you everything I might have done. It’s not enough, and I know it, but he hasn’t been gone long. It should bring the balance back.  You can bring him back.”

Gansey listens to the trees for a second, but they seem to hold their breath, wind still. He nods once, shortly, and gets back in the car. As he starts it, Adam stares at him in growing horror.

“No. No, Gansey.”

Gansey doesn’t hear him. He hits the accelerator and takes off with a speed Ronan would envy. He tears through the trees, and up ahead they begin to thin out. For a second, Adam thinks it’s the edge of Cabeswater, but the sun continues beyond it. He realizes that it is an edge, just not one he’s ever seen here before.  _ Cabeswater responds to what you want _ he thinks.  _ What Gansey wants is— _

Gansey shifts into a higher gear and hits the brand new edge of a brand new cliff with a look of fierce and furious joy. He is so like Ronan in this moment. Adam’s non-existent stomach drops.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” is the only thing he can think to shout, hands scrabbling at empty air. “You do not fucking do this!”

Gansey doesn’t hear him, he can’t, but at the last second he turns and seems to meet Adam’s eyes. The Pig tips in the air, and branches whip up towards them. There’s a horrible rending of metal and splintering of trees.

Black

Hissing

The smell of smoke.

Adam opens his eyes and sits up in the wreckage. It’s late, dark. No one has found the Pig yet. He wonders if they can, or if that will be left to Ronan and Blue. Gansey’s arm is thrown out in front of him at an unhealthy angle, and Adam still can’t touch him.

He is furious.

“Is this what I’m supposed to learn? Huh? That you self-destruct without me? You abandon them, like— You fucking— This is  _ bullshit _ !” He calls the last word out to Cabeswater.  “What do you want me to do?”

Cabeswater says nothing, but he can sense it. He can tell it’s avoiding him. 

“Well, fuck you.”

He looks around.

“Noah?” Nothing. “Gansey? Are you here now?” Nothing.

Adam sighs. He’s exhausted. He misses the deep and desperate sleep of a night shift and an eight a.m. class. He lays down beside Gansey and shuts his eyes.

“If I could touch you right now,” he whispers. “and you were alive, I’d fucking punch you. I’d punch your goddamn lights out.”

Midnight. He’s yanked down into sleep.

In the morning, it’s Friday again, but it’s different. He feels like he’s slept, for the first time. He feels like he’s had coffee, which he definitely has not. It takes him a second to realize what it is that’s woken him up, what is billowing up in his chest. It’s not fear, it’s not grief. It not even love, or at least not exclusively.

He sits up in bed and feels a smile as sharp as a Lynch take over his face.

It’s not dread, this morning, that courses through his veins. It’s rage. 


	4. Day 21

Adam is sitting on the side steps on the church when the Pig pulls up. Blue scoots over in the back seat to make room for him as he rises, but he shakes his head.

“We need to talk,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over the asthmatic rumble of the engine. Gansey cuts it off and leans out of the window.

“What?”

“Get out. We need to talk. All of us.”

He feels a bit like a teacher, standing on the second step as they file out to stand in front of him. He’s had a plan for talking them through it all, simple to complicated, light to heavy.

“What’s going on, Parrish?” Gansey asks, hands in his pockets, sleeves of his uniform sweater rolled up to his elbows.

Parrish.  _ God damn it, Adam Parrish. _

Everything rehearsed floods out of Adam’s mind. He sits down on the step and looks up at them all.

“I’m having a, um. A weird thing with, um. Time?”

They blink down at him.

“Weird how?” Blue finally asks, carefully.

“Is Noah with you? He knows.”

“He was and then he wasn’t.”

“I’m not crazy. Or, no, I am probably by now, by this point. Mad, or whatever, but only after—”

“Adam,” Ronan says seriously, crouching down beside him. “Slow down.”

Adam looks at him and sees him yesterday, today, rocking in the corner with blood and brain matter on his knuckles, and Adam grabs onto his wrist like he’s drowning.

“I’ve had this day before. I’ve been through this day more, I mean, multiple times.”

“Groundhog Day?” Blue asks.

“Not funny.”

“I didn’t mean— I mean like that, like you’re stuck in a vortex or something? Was it a dream?”

“I wake up on Friday morning, I live the day—the whole day, no matter what I do—and then at midnight I pass out and I wake up on Friday morning. And you come to pick me up. And Gansey’s in his uniform. And you—” he points at Blue—” have one red sock and one grey sock and no matter what I do it  _ does not— will not change.” _

There’s a long silence.

Gansey opens his mouth to say something, then closes it, rubs his lower lip.

“Please believe me,” Adam says to him. “Please skip to the part where you believe me.”

Gansey looks surprised. “Of course I believe you. I was only wondering  … why today? What happens today?”

Adam breathes out, slowly. “That’s the problem.”

He drops his head and runs his fingers through his hair. Blue makes an odd sound. Not really a gasp, not really a groan, like somebody with a broken rib breathing too deep.

“We find Glendower,” he says.

“And does it—” Gansey scratches an ear. “Does it go wrong?”

Adam almost laughs, painfully. “Yeah.”

“Adam,” Ronan says again, and it’s unnerving hearing his name twice in one day. Adam rises.

“You die, Gansey.”

Ronan sucks in a breath between his teeth and grabs onto Gansey’s sleeve, like he’s in danger of being pulled away. Silently, Adam apologizes for not warning him. For the weeks of knowing it was coming and saying nothing.  _ One of us deserved to be happy. Ronan deserved to be okay, for a while. _

Blue closes her eyes and balls her hands into fists.

Gansey nods and chew his lip.

“Right,” he says.

“Right?” Adam repeats.

Ganseys blows out a long breath. “I mean I— Well. That… Stinks.”

There’s a strangled kind of sound from Ronan, and he turns away from them, bent double.

Blue covers her face.

“No, I mean it makes sense,” Gansey says, reaching towards her. She steps back, shaking her head and chewing on her shirt cuff.

Gansey turns back to Adam. “Right? I mean it makes sense. That’s why I’m alive. Glendower. And once he’s found, I’m. Well. I’m done, aren’t I.”

Adam’s brow furrows. “Done?”

“I mean, what’s the use? You know, after? I live because of Glendower, so after—”

Adam’s vision blurs for a second around the edges as a sudden and uncontrollable rage washes over him. He is a wick, dipped in gasoline.

“What the fuck,” he says, flatly, vibrating with it.

“I—” Gansey looks patient and Adam wants to crash a car.

“What the fuck, Gansey?  There’s no return policy on your life.”

“Calm down, Adam, it’s okay—”

“No. No, it’s coming together now. It makes sense.” There’s hot oil boiling under his tongue and he’s angry and wants to hit something and they’re the only people there so he’s going to hit them. “You know what I did yesterday?”

“Real yesterday, or—” Blue asks, and he laughs, harsh.

“My yesterday. The last variation. I was sick of waiting and sick of trying and failing and failing — And the way it felt, losing you every day. You don’t just _die_ , Gansey, that’s not how the story _ends._ _I lose you. That’s_ the fucking—” He turns away from them, blinking up at the sun til it hurts his eyes.

“I shot myself in the head. Right in the fucking— And it still—”

“What the  _ fuck _ —” Ronan’s closer than Adam expecting, grabbing on to his arm, with one hand and his jaw with the other, looking him over like there would still be evidence. Blue is staring, horrified, and Gansey just blinks, like he’s looking at a math problem that doesn’t add up.

“Adam, no, no,” Ronan’s muttering at him, rough. “Adam.”

“Stop saying my name,” Adam says. It’s too close to yesterday, so he pulls away.

“It didn’t stick. Obviously.”

“With what?” Gansey asks, his voice almost light. But it’s light like somebody walking over ice, like staving off the inevitable plunge.

“What?”

“Shot yourself with what?”

“I have my dad’s— It doesn’t matter. I have my dad’s gun. That’s not what—”

“So you’ve had it this whole time? Since you left?  And we didn’t even know? None of us knew that you might just one day—”

“I’m not the fucking  _ suicidal _ one, Gansey.”

“Apparently you are.” He sounds livid, consonants crackling.

“You died in my arms every day for  _ weeks _ —”

“Adam—” Blue reaches out to him and he steps farther back from all of them.

“—And it didn’t even matter. It didn’t do anything, it didn’t even restart the day. I was just stuck there, invisible, watching you,  _ watching you _ —” He can’t stop himself from looking around at Ronan, tasting rubber at the back of his tongue. Ronan is very, very pale. 

“I was like Noah. I was with Noah. He’s never coming back, Gansey, not all the way. You know it. There’s not enough left of him.”

Gansey opens his mouth to argue, but Adam cuts him off.

“The only one that didn’t make sense was you, Gansey. The only person who didn’t make any sense, but I see it now. I’ve figured it out. I thought Cabeswater was giving me a chance to save you, I thought it was teaching me a lesson about pride, and how I’ll always fail you, but that’s not it at all, is it? You’ve known this whole time, haven’t you?”

“Known what?”

“Stop it.”

Gansey worries his bottom lip. Blue sucks in a breath and stares at him, eyes wide.

“I had a feeling,” Gansey finally says.

“And you don’t even want to fight it. Do you? You’re just accepting it. You want to die.”

“What didn’t make sense?” Ronan asks. His voice is cigarette-rough and his teeth are gritted together. Adam thinks suddenly of the falling tiles at Aglionby, the protective circle cast around him. He wishes he could cast one now around Ronan, throw him far enough from the explosion.  _ Evacuate _ he thinks as loudly as he can.  _ Run while you still can _ .

“Adam,” Ronan says again. “What didn’t make sense about Gansey? What’s makes you think he wants to die?”

Adam hesitates. “He killed himself.”

Gansey almost scoffs. “I wouldn’t.”

“You drove the Pig off a fucking cliff.”

“Oh my God,” Blue whispers and steps away from Gansey. He reaches out towards her.

“I wou— Wait, where did I find a  _ cliff _ ?”

“Does it matter? Cabeswater. You wished up a cliff and drove off it, and I was  _ there.” _

“I’m sure I had a reason—”

“Stop it. Tell me the truth. Tell us the truth, the whole thing. Please, Gansey. Did you know?”

Gansey looks at the ground for a long time. “It’s what I’m for.”

“What?” Blue asks.

“It’s what I was saved for. ‘You will live because of Glendower.’ I’m in debt, to him, to … to  _ it,  _ to whatever. I got some extra years, and it’s been great, but, you know.” He smiles, weakly. “It’s a purpose, I guess.”

“Bullshit,” Ronan says. “This is bullshit.” He stalks away towards the church.

“Ronan—” Blue calls after him, but Gansey shakes his head. 

“Let him go.”

“He’s right, though,” Adam says. “It is bullshit. That’s not your purpose.”

“What is, then?”

“You’re not Glendower’s, and you’re not Cabeswater’s. Even if you used to be.”

“Whose am I, then?”

_ Mine _ , Adam thinks, but he swallows it down. “Your own. Ours. Your purpose is to stay here. With us, with people who need you. You’re meant to stay with me. Don’t you see that? Do you really not know?”

Gansey is staring at him, confusion in the quirk between his eyebrows. Adam breathes out, slowly.

“You really don’t know. You were just going to let it happen.” He steps closer and reach out for him. Gansey looks almost scared, so Adam waits.

“I don’t want to trouble anybody,” Gansey finally says, small. “I just wanted— I wanted  _ something _ . I’m sorry you’ve suffered for it.”

“This is what it meant. Make a different ending. But I can’t do it alone, I can’t do it without you. I need you to try. I need you with me. We can’t let them take you.”

“Who?”

“Anyone.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Adam sees Blue quietly leave them be, going after Ronan. He moves closer to Gansey, and puts a hand on his shoulder. Gansey still won’t look at him, chewing on his lip, shoulders oddly stooped.

“You’re tired,” Adam says, softly. “And you aren’t enough. And you won’t ever be, because you’re not a full person, are you? There’s a space, here—” he presses a hand between Gansey’s ribs. “There’s a pit, isn’t there?”

Gansey nods.

“We’re going to fix it.”

Gansey closes his eyes and lets himself lean in to Adam’s space. “Tell me what to do,” he says, almost a whisper.

For a moment, Adam is overcome with the urge to kiss him. He leans in and presses their foreheads together, reveling in the warmth of his skin, both hands coming up to hold him.

“I’m never giving up on you. I don’t care how long it takes. A month, a year, I won’t stop trying.”

“You’ve been stuck here how long?” Gansey asks. “Weeks?”

“A few, yeah. Three weeks, maybe?”

“Oh, Adam.” He straightens, pulls Adam closer, tucks his face into his shoulder. “That’s such a long time to be alone.”

The dying fire inside him finally sputters out, and he feels pressure building behind his eyes. He tries to surreptitiously rub his nose behind Gansey’s back.

“If you want to die,” he says, voice uneven, pulling back to look him in the eye. “Really, truly, I won’t fight you. I wouldn’t take the choice away from you. But you’re seventeen, Gansey. Look me in the eye and tell me you’re ready to die. Leave everyone, leave Henrietta.” He swallows. “Leave me.”

“It’s not my choice,” Gansey says.

“It can be.”

“This shouldn’t be your responsibility. Keeping me alive isn’t your job. Taking care of me.” Gansey’s hand reaches up like he’s about to touch Adam’s cheek, but he backs off at the last moment, clenching his fist and rubbing it under his eye. “You shouldn’t have to suffer because of me.”

“I’m going to suffer because of you regardless. That’s what love is.”

Gansey makes a choked sound, half a laugh. “Love.”

“Yeah.”

“Love,” Blue says, coming up behind him. Ronan trails behind her, hands stuffed into his pockets. Gansey and Adam pull apart, embarrassed, and Blue rolls her eyes. Her voice is soft, though, when she asks, “Are we good?”

Gansey nods.

“We’re going to fix this,” Adam says. He reaches out for Ronan, pulls him close. Ronan lets out a long breath, like he’s been holding it all morning, and tucks his face into Adam’s neck. Adam scratches at the back of his head. “It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be good. We’re going to fix it.”

“How?” Blue asks. She has one finger hooked into Gansey’s belt loop and Gansey’s blushing. “What’s the plan?”

Adam closes his eyes and taps into the whisper space in his mind.

_ Tell me what to do _ .

Cabeswater says nothing. Adam sighs.

_ Fuck you, then.  _ He smiles to himself. There’s something satisfying about how those words land inside his head.  _ I don’t need you. _

He opens his eyes to find the other three staring at him. He looks to Gansey, and Gansey looks— young. Very, very young. His hands look awkward and his eyes are just a little too wide. He looks lost.

_ Okay _ , Adam thinks.  _ I’m in charge. _

_ “ _ We go to Cabeswater. We take the fight to Cabeswater.”

“It’s a fight now?” Blue asks. “Us versus who?”

“Who, what, we’ll figure it out. I’ve been trying to prevent it; I’ve been running away. Time to try an offensive. We get your mother on board, Blue, and Calla. Even the crazy one, if we can. Glendower isn’t the one with power here. We are.”

“And if it doesn’t work?” Ronan asks.

“Then we try again tomorrow. I’ll be better at explaining it all, I think, now that I’ve done it once.”

“Let’s hope we get it right in one,” Blue says. “You deserve better.”

Gansey says nothing, but he nods.

“We’re going to fix it,” Adam says to him. “We’re saving you. Sooner you get on board with that, the easier this is going to be.”

Gansey nods.

“Say it,” Adam insists.

“I’m on board,” Gansey says. 

“You’re going to live.”

Gansey nods again, unsure.

“Say it, Gansey,” Ronan says.

Gansey looks over at him, and finally a real, true, tiny smile slips onto his face. 

“I’m going to live.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone! I'm very glad to be done.


End file.
